


Seven kingdoms couldn't fill the hole she left behind

by crazychipmunk



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arya is dead, Character Death, F/M, Gendry married someone else, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, King Gendry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazychipmunk/pseuds/crazychipmunk
Summary: After Arya Stark dies in the final battle against the Dragon Queen, King Gendry tries to rebuild the Seven Kingdoms without her. He is determined not to repeat his father's mistakes but perhaps he is truly his father's son and fated to mourn her forever.





	Seven kingdoms couldn't fill the hole she left behind

**Author's Note:**

> How would Gendry react to Arya dying? Both immediately after and for the years to come?

King Gendry Baratheon, First of His Name, raised King's Landing from the ashes. After spending a lifetime in Flea Bottom, in the neglect and the filth, King Gendry built his new capital for the common folk.  
  
Great civic centers stand on wide and airy streets. A sewer system surpasses even Tyrion Lannister's at Casterly Rock; King's Landing is the cleanest city in Westeros. All across the continent, people say that the new capital gleams in the sunlight, every surface new and polished, and the entire city smelles of fresh baked bread.  
  
King Gendry is nothing like his father, yet he is exactly the same. While Robert Baratheon eased the pain of losing Lyanna Stark with drink and women, Gendry Baratheon throws himself into his work as king, meticulously designing every street and every corner of King's Landing until he can navigate it blind if he had to.  
  
Once King's Landing was completed, then it was the Kingsroad, then a Queensroad for his wife and a Princesroad for his son until all roads lead to King's Landing and the Seven Kingdoms are united like never before.  
  
The common folk whisper that their king must dream of utopia each night, so motivated he is build it. Gendry wishes every night that what they say is true. That he will dream of the new road being built to Dorne, or the construction delays on expanding the docks at King's Landing. But Arya Stark had been persistent in life, and she proves even more persistent in death.  
  
Even as he lies next to his queen in the reconstructed Red Keep, he dreams of Arya Stark. He tries to stop himself, he had been born the bastard of an unfaithful man and he does not wish to repeat his father's mistakes.  
  
"Have you seen my wife?" he asks Arya in his dreams.  
  
Most of the time she ignores this, but sometimes, she'll give him a smirk and quirk her eyebrow in the way she knows he loves so much. Arya leans into him, as close as she can get without actually touching him. "None of it is worth anything if you're not with me," she breathes into his mouth.  
  
"So be with me," he replies, before falling into her, kissing her like he hasn't kissed her in years. Kisses her as if he hadn't kissed her in his dreams the night before and the night before that. Every night since she was taken from him.  
  
Gendry always wakes up in a cold sweat, sitting up in his featherbed, desperately grasping at the air, rousing his wife next to him. Most of the time, Gendry sees Arya die. She bursts into flames in his arms and he wakes up to the sound of her screams, skin still hot from where she burned in his arms. Or, he will taste her blood in his mouth as he's kissing her, a sword run through her back or her belly or her heart. The life sputters out of her as he desperately reaches to close her wounds, hands covered in her blood.  
  
But the worst is when she walks away from him, too far for him to reach, betrayal written all over her face. She looks unbelievably young, as if they've returned to that day in the Brotherhood's cave when he had chosen to leave her.  
  
"It's time to return to your family, your grace," she says sadly, "your wife will be wondering where you went."  
  
"You're my family," he roars back at her, "I wanted you to be my wife." But Arya's already turned into ash and his grasping hands only find the empty darkness of the king's chambers.  
  
When Gendry married the lady who would become his queen, a political marriage, he had pledged to honor her, to remain faithful to her; he would father no bastards like his father had. He would not be his father. Every girl in the Seven Kingdoms dreamed of him back then, lean and fierce and black-bearded, and his betrothed was no exception.  
  
Despite her infatuation with him, Gendry's wife was not stupid. The Seven Kingdoms were abuzz about the Stark girl he had loved and lost. _He may have been born a bastard_ , they say, _but he is the true son of Robert Baratheon. Robert reborn. Lyanna reborn and dead again._  
  
The queen knew he did not love her when they married. But she had expected to build it slowly over the years, stone by stone, for their children and for the realm. He had been honest with her in the beginning, when he still woke in the dead night of night desperately screaming Arya's name.  
  
But as the years passed, he could no longer stand the hurt in the eyes of his wife and their children when they caught him staring at Arya's portrait or running his fingers along her Valyrian steel dagger. So now, he tells his wife that he dreams of the war, that he's fighting the wights or the Dragon Queen's army.  
  
"A man without a weapon in a battle is a dead man," he tells her, "In my worst nightmares, I've lost my warhammer, and when I wake I am still searching for it."  
  
The queen smiles at that, kisses him, proud of her brave husband still haunted by the war he won. Proud of the love they've built over the years. When he sees how much she trusts him, he worries that he is even worse than his father. That he has betrayed Arya's memory. Robert Baratheon had been honest about his love for Lyanna until his dying day and Gendry only had the courage to face Arya in his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> I could totally see Gendry overhauling Westeros with Roman-style reforms, civic spaces, and infrastructure projects. Super attentive and basically the opposite of King Robert except for their tragic love of Stark girls :(  
> Anyways, please comment with what you think! I really appreciate them :)


End file.
